Figure 1. Truth, 2023, unique gelatin silver print on panchromatic paper, continuous roll/hand-brushed to develop, 70cm x 16M. Installation view, RMIT University, Melbourne, 2023
Truth is a new work created to include in my final folio presentation in place of Trust, which, at the time, was on display as a Bowness Prize finalist at the Museum of Australian Photography group exhibition 2023.
To make the work, I exposed a single negative in repeated intervals across a continuous roll of panchromatic paper black and white gelatin silver paper.[1] As the paper is sensitive to the full spectrum of visible light, the red safe light in the darkroom and the ambient light spilling onto the balcony during development obliterated the underlying image. Abstraction enters the work by applying the developing chemicals by hand, where I have permitted them to drip and run at will.
Truth challenges the illusion of representational truth in photography. What emerges from beneath the emulsion is not a conventional image, as the exposure would suggest, but rather the embodiment of my skewed vision of the world.
Figure 2. Truth (detail), 2023
Figure 3. Truth (detail), 2023
Figure 4. Truth (detail), 2023
Footnotes
Panchromatic paper is sensitive to the full spectrum of visible light – including darkroom safelights –and must be worked with in complete darkness.